Overview
Bureaucracy and Public Choice gives a theoretical and empirical appraisal of modern bureaucracy. It argues that bureaucracies and bureaucrats are indispensable in the making and implementation of public choice.Explanations of bureaucracy range from the Weberian model - with bureaucracy maximising rationality - to the interpretation of the 'garbage-can' scholars - presenting bureaucracy as organized chaos. The book first considers approaches to understanding bureaucratic behaviour in organizational sociology, economics, and decision-making theory.
The concepts of bureaucratic efficiency and accountability are discussed at length. The political culture of a country is shown to influence the relationship between bureaucrats, politicians and the electorate, affecting both their efficiency and accountability.
The status of bureaucracies is shown to depend on whether they deliver the goods according to normative criteria. The book makes these criteria explicit and assesses the extent to which bureaucracies are capable of meeting them.